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“The purpose of a business is to get and keep a customer. Without customers, no amount of engineering wizardry, clever financing, or operations expertise can keep a company going.”
Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School
Principles
Principles
Your marketing-focused organization directs all its efforts toward satisfying its customers, at a profit. Thus the role of marketing as well as its components is far broader than advertising and promotion. Marketing first and foremost identifies and understands the customer, develops the product / service solution, develops a brand and grows and maintains its equity among customers. Marketing should also be responsible for the communication of the personality, commitments and goals of the organization to all stakeholders in and outside the organization. Finally, by seeking the understanding of customers' needs, Marketing has an important role in recommending Innovation.
In order to acquire and retain the right customers and serve them responsibly, Marketing must also be responsible for Sales, to ensure consistency of communications and activities, as well as to protect brand equity from ill-advised promotions and other sales revenue oriented decisions (at the expense of gross margin or brand).
Your head of marketing must be a numbers person with creative talent. Otherwise they will not be able to manage the research, analysis, budgets and foresting required to execute the job expertly.
The basic activities of marketing to support these goals include marketing research to segment and differentiate customers, marketing planning to address these customers needs, and marketing execution to gain awareness and trial of the product (service). You must support all of these activities with effective communications.
Marketing Responsibilities
Marketing Research
Marketing Research
Traditional marketing research began with the "scientific" method based in a hypothesis. Unfortunately hypotheses tend to skew results to your own ideas (hypotheses), perhaps not your customers' goals. Your modern and more successful approach begins with a deep understanding of your customers' needs, then matching that to your capabilities for solution development. (See the Innovation section for more on this). As you further define your customers' problems and needs, you will segment a differentiated group who becomes your target audience.
Define
Define
"Don't be a solution in search of a problem." Find a market opportunity by defining the a unique problem for a specific set of users, large enough to create market for your solution. Use both online research as well as interviews to really understand the scope and depth of the market and it's needs.
Segment
Segment
Identify where and how to find and communicate with the group who shares the defined problem, then analyze and solve how you will communicate with them Finally, determine how to pursuade them to buy your uniqe solution, and finally facilitate their ability to make the purchase.
Differentiate
Differentiate
Position your product to create customer attention by matching your solution to the segment's unique needs. Then communicate with them "where they are", such as on Instagram if they are young, or perhaps in a retail store if your product / service requires in-person selling. Finally, use the tools of persuasion to drive their purchase of your product.
Why bother with a formal marketing plan particularly if you have already been selling in the target market for decades? A marketing plan has great value for the same reasons to any firm: it forces the discipline of discovery and definition of the elements of a plan, and once decided, gives a guide map for the successes to follow or the failures to discontinue. For this reason, a good marketing plan is better than a bad one, or especially not having one, and will usually result in increased profits over time as you adjust to realities along the way.
This marketing plan should include a complete guide to the target market: its definition, segment, problem and how your solution answers their needs and why they will buy it. Secondly, it must define where and how they buy: geographically, in-store / office, online, etc. and how you will capture their attention, interest, purchase decision and action to buy. And finally, it must use SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time based) to be sure you can measure your successes or lack of them.
You will capture their attention via familiar tools including the "4 P's" (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) tools of marketing, and get their purchase using simple and effective persuasion tools. (all tools of marketing linked below). They will buy from you because you've solved their problem and because they want to!
Marketing Planning
Marketing Planning
Marketing Execution
Marketing Execution
Your marketing execution strategy will be unique to you, as it must reflect your answers to the 4P's of marketing and also the elements of persuasion you deploy. For example, from the first year at XIKAR in all of our marketing efforts we used "EIR": Education to gain authority, consistent Interaction with our consumers to gain trust, and Reward of a free leather sheath with purchase for reciprocity. As you go through the Tools of Marketing, keep in mind your customers needs, and how your solution solves the need in a manner consistent with your core values. The plan will reveal itself, as noted on the Tools page. Regardless of the strategy you take, the one element in common with all other plans is communication. I have follow three cardinal rules which I believe are especially relevant in today's online environment: you must be Authentic, Communicative and Consistent.
Authentic
Authentic
Who are you? In order to create trust, a brand must be authentic to its core values, its mission and especially its customers' needs, regardless of the style or approach. What matters in Personality, Honesty and Integrity for a high-end brand also matters for lower-priced items. Marketing must ensure that all company communications and behaviors are authentic to the core values and strategies of the company.
Personality
Personality
Personality – you must embed and share who you are as a leader and a business (your core values) through all of your activities. This cascades to your product and service. To learn more about how to create core values,
Honesty
Honesty
Is there any other way to be? And yet we all have seen dishonesty, even through lack of transparency or more subtly confusion of goals (primarily profit over Brand). Today's authenticity demands vulnerable honesty, candor and empathy. Your customers will reward you for it.
Integrity
Integrity
Say what you'll do, do what you said. Stand behind who you are by what and how you do. This is the body-armour of authenticity, and is vital whether you sell a high end or inexpensive brand. Can people trust you?
Communications must be consistent in content, timing, frequency and tone. Your customer will come to expect and look for it, as it also adds value to their business because they can be certain of your behaviors.
Consistent
Consistent
Word
Word
Say what you'll do. Lack of consistency isn't honesty, it isn't leadership. It fails the meaning of "organization". Consistency in quality, service, process, value, and word create trust. Consistent communications transmits these values regularly and effectively to convince all stakeholders.
Your Word is your Guarantee
Deed
Deed
Do what you say. Deed is your proof. Stand behind what you say, and that creates your brand! Even when you must do something and lose money to keep your word, do it. Printing a warranty is one thing – doing it completely gets all the accolades and loyalty. Act on this integrity regularly.
Your Deed is the Warranty!
Process
Process
Process is the backbone of trust. When you and your team do the same thing, the same way, your customer will know what to expect. People prefer familiarity, even when it is more expensive. Consistent process, well communicated, creates Trust.
Consistency = Trust, And Trust = Brand!
Communicative
Communicative
The way you communicate matters as much as the content of it. Rather than a "me" orientation, your communications should empathise with your audience's needs, be frequent enough to keep there attention, and fast to respond to their needs.
Concern
Concern
Do you care for and about your customers? It's important to them; they can read the signs. Good communications must convey concern, and customers will reward your concern by telling you the solutions they need – and then buying it from you.
Frequent
Frequent
Start and stop doesn't keep attention, build credibility or trust. We all trust frequency: "if it's still here, it must be good / successful." Or, "I keep hearing about it, I'll try that." Don't let your audience lose interest, since they may not come back when you restart.
Quick
Quick
The greater the need, the greater the problem, the quicker response. This is obviously true in Service, yet today's social media also demonstrates the value of speed to your business marketing. The expectation for speed is very high!
How the internet changed marketing communications! Today's online environment demands and allows more specific targeting than in the "advertising era," and insists on deeper authenticity through real content distribution. In your marketing communications, you must be definitively who you are, and publish that regularly and freely to your target market. This will be easy when you base your efforts in your core Values. Your customers will reward you through multiplying awareness of your product, increased purchase, loyalty and perceived brand quality.
Brand Management
Brand Management
Brand Management
Your well-managed brand will become one of your most important assets, since it differentiates you from the competition and adds the "why" of customer choice for your products. It will also lead to higher profits through brand preference based in trust. Finally, if / when you decide to sell the business, Brand will be an intangible addest adding multiples to your value!
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